Barrister Bola Emmanuel Longe,is the serving commissioner of police,Nasarawa state command and home state of the current IGP Adamu Mohammed. He spoke on adopting and implementing several police reforms policies of the Inspector general of police,that has help in curbing crime and criminal elements .He said only unprofessional police officers complaints,but professionals don’t. Francis Nansak was there. Excerpt
Crime and criminality is on the increase in Nasarawa state ,under your watch,what is your reaction to this?
Well, thank you very much ,but I will disagree with you fundamentally,occasionally we have incidences of house breaking,occasional kidnapping and armed robbery is minimal in the state here and on the other issue of rape,there is little or nothing the police can do about rape.People don’t rape in the open ,they rape covertly where police would not be available, because police are not in every house.However, what we do about rape is when new cases are reported and we moved to carry out exhaustive investigations then charged them to the court when arrested.So that we can deter others from committing rape.
But in the case of house breaking ,kidnapping and armed robbery, we have deployed our men to all the strategic areas in the state.Keffi, Garaku,Gudi and in Akwanga.You can go there as everywhere is fully covered now.And we are ready to deal decisively with anybody who would want to make live difficult for law abiding citizens of the state.
And then in Akwanga-Many have Gone,Nasarawa Eggon, Shabu and Lafia road, is fully covered, as well as Jankwe ,Adogi,Asakio,Sabon Gida and our boundary with plateau. Lafia-Doma,Lafia-Obi,Awe and Keana.We have Five Divisional Headquarters, we have taken newly25 neighborhood Pin down Points and for over 5 days now we have been everywhere patrolling virtually in every nok and crannies of Lafia. We evolved this system when we noticed we are having increased in robeery activity, so that we ventilate all the areas in the state capital,so our personnel are everywhere.
Would you say you have successfully maned the highways,because the robbers still operates?
Where? Where?? You see we have increase in rapes that is why any rapist that is arrested will be subjected to thorough investigations and such a rapist will be charged to court after our investigation, if the person is found to be culpable and if you are talking about villages,we have our men patrolling everywhere but we can’t be in every village.That is why our amiable Inspector general of police,has evolved what is called Community policing.When crime was in the increase in the country,he device several strategies including Operation Puff Adder and we were able to caged and thwarted efforts of criminal elements. And then now rape cases,he has encouraged that we tried as much as possible to get the rapist and we have successfully arrested a lot of them,we paraded some two weeks ago and more will be paraded and I want to say without any iota of contradiction that our personnel in Nasarawa state are professional and they are deployed professionally,because of that crime rate in this state is tolerable.
We want to appealed to members of the public through your instrumentality of being here to assist us with credible information.
CP sir,from your investigations and findings have you unraveled whether this people are coming from outside or within the state?
Well, we discovered that the war waged in Zamfara,Niger and Kaduna states some of them came in here and we moved instantly to checkmate their operational capacity in this state. We didn’t allowed them to have their theater and arrested 39 kidnappers and another 23 at Mararaba Udege.we have constantly arrested them,but is not every time we will go to the press.” So we are dealing with them” and like i had said ,today we have sent out about 170 personnel to raid an area.” But I told them who ever is found in that kidnap operational joint should be arrested and be subjected to investigation, those who have no business being there will be released and those who are there for the proposed of crime will be prosecuted.
Sir, to have boosted of recording these success in crime fighting, how sufficiently equipped are you and what are your challenges?
I have told you once that complaints comes from unprofessional that does not know what he is doing. I can not complained that we don’t have sufficient manpower, we can make do with the manpower we have. I can not say we don’t have sufficient vehicles, the once we have on ground, enable us to move around What we need majorly is information. People of these areas should assist us ,that is the essence of community policing. Community policing takes police activities to the grassroots and brings the grassroots nearer to the police,in order to know what is happening. Our men are professional, always deployed professionally and the IGP is at our support ,the governor is supporting us,so we have no excuse.we are doing our best within our operational latitude and by the grace of God Nasarawa state will have little or no criminal activities, to be the safest state in the north central.
